COLUMN: Carole White - Your staff makes the business

00:01, 11 Feb 2013

Updated 15:50, 25 Jun 2013

ByThe Journal

A HIGH staff turnover can be extremely costly to your business.

Share

A HIGH staff turnover can be extremely costly to your business. Not only does it cost money to advertise for and train new staff but internal morale is lowered, harming the company’s external reputation.

Retaining your staff is of paramount importance and the key to staff retention lies in a good recruitment process and an honest organisational structure.

A good idea for any business is to create and maintain a staff retention strategy that motivates and engages employees. This requires nurturing positive cultural values such as trust, respect, empathy, tolerance and conscientiousness. On the other side of the scale, it’s important to be honest about less positive values, actively reducing or eliminating negative attitudes and behaviour.

According to research the most common negative reasons for leaving a job are:

poor salary and benefits;

a lack of training and development opportunities;

dissatisfaction with management;

unfriendly colleagues;

lack of work/life balance;

misrepresentation of the role.

Improved staff retention should be the result of adopting a mix of the following:

ensure those being recruited have a realistic idea of what the job entails;

improve career development opportunities;

scheduled appraisals;

strong diversity policies;

a practicable means of dealing with bullying;

a good work/life balance;

a mechanism for staff to register dissatisfaction, whether it be appraisals, grievance proceedings and so on;

leadership training for managers.

The ultimate aim should be to make every employee feel valued and proud of their work, therefore developing a working environment that encourages diversity and creativity.

If employees are happy with their work it shows. This enthusiasm is infectious not just to colleagues but to customers too.

Adopting a strategy for staff retention is not easy but will benefit your organisation. As a company develops and changes, so do the needs of its employees and so in turn should your retention strategy.

Treat your staff as you do your customers, listen to them and take on board any suggestions they have. Your employees are your main asset and no business would be here without them.

For further advice from Tedco, please contact us on 0191 428 3300 or email enquire@tedco.org